The Romans Case

The Romans a lot of important breakthroughs when it comes to advancing technology. Some of these helped bring together different cities. Some helped to keep sickness at bay. Most of the new technology helped to make the city livable. Two ideas in technology are the aqueducts and the public baths.

The Emperor Augustus "built aqueducts to bring fresh water to the city and built numerous public baths, complete with gymnasiums and brothels." (Mahdavi, 2012) Baths themselves were always around wherever there were hot springs. The Romans wanted baths to be available in the city where there was not direct access to any hot springs. They came up with the idea of the public bath.

The public bath was very luxurious. They had mirrors, mosaics and paintings. The bath had your choice of temperature. They had three different rooms with hot, warm and cold water. In the hot room, slaves would clean and perfume their masters using a strigil. "A strigil was a small, curved, metal tool used to scrape dirt and sweat from the body." (Barrow). The hot water would open up the body's pores and then the men would go into the cold water pools in order to clean their pores out.

The public bath was a modern day YMCA. Baths had entertainment areas along with pools. People went there not only to get clean, but to get all the gossip and news from the day. With the first baths only men were allowed in. Slaves could go in when they were paid for by a wealthy citizen. Once women started to become more financially independent they were able to use the baths at times when the men were not around.

The main water supply for Rome was the Tiber River. The Tiber River was being contaminated "by runoff from the Roman baths... It had also been contaminated by the Cloaca Maxima, the great drain and sewer" (Long, 2008). Since the river was being polluted, the Romans had to come up with a new way to keep water clean. They started hydraulic engineering projects that were known as aqueducts. An aqueduct is basically a tunnel that supplies cities with water.

There were approximately 200 miles of aqueduct systems, most having been built under the ground. The water went through the aqueducts and into cisterns where it was stored. From there pipes would lead from it and go into the fountains or baths. Aqueducts needed to be kept up to date so they did get polluted also.

"Romans assigned a Curator Aquarum to oversee this undertaking." (Roman Aqueducts) These curators only took care of the aqueducts in the Roman Empire. Any aqueducts that were outside of the boundaries had to be maintained by the province.

Public baths helped to make the city more civilized because it was a great place for the people. They could meet and disperse information to each other. Baths also helped to lower the populations' chances of getting sick because you could bath in clean water. The